Salesian Literature

Chapter 9  :  Virtues derive their perfection from charity

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CHARITY …is the bond which makes us perfect (Col. 3:14).  It is the sum total of all the soul’s perfections.  If we lack charity, not only is it impossible for us to have all the virtues, we cannot even have any virtue perfectly.  If stones and bricks lack cement or mortar, the whole building will crumble; if there were no nerves, muscles or tendons, our bodies would be finished; if charity is lacking, there is nothing to hold the virtues together.

 

Our Lord always associates the keeping of his commandments with charity; The man who loves me, he says, is the man who keeps the commandments he has from me.  Whereas the man who has no love for me, lets my sayings pass him by.  If a man has any love for me, he will be true to my word (Jn. 14:21-23).  The beloved disciple echoes his Master’s teaching: If a man keeps true to his word, then it is certain that the love of God has reached its full stature in him (1 Jn. 2:5).  Loving God means keeping his commandment (1 Jn. 5:3).

 

Suppose a man possesses all the virtues … he would keep all the commandments.  By the virtue of religion he would keep the first three commandments; by piety he would keep the fourth; by meekness and forbearance he would keep the fifth, by chastity he would keep the sixth; by generosity he would avoid breaking the seventh; by truthfulness he would fulfil the eighth; by frugality and purity he would keep the ninth and tenth.  If charity is essential for keeping the commandments, it is even more essential for possessing the virtues.

 

Of course it is possible to possess some virtues, even go for a time without sinning, yet have no charity.  However, when a man’s heart is bereft of charity, though he may do some virtuous actions, they are short-lived.

 

Other virtues can be a mutual help and stimulus to each other in their activity, their practice.  After all, we know that chastity needs and stimulates temperance, that obedience leads to generosity, to prayer, to humility.  By this mutual relationship they share in one another’s perfections.  Chastity preserved through obedience has a twofold dignity: its own, and that of obedience; indeed, even more of obedience than its own.  For, as Aristotle says[1], the man who stole for the purpose of committing fornication was more of a sensualist than a thief; what he wanted was a woman, theft was only the means of getting her.  In the same way, the man whose chastity depends on obedience is more obedient than chaste; he practises chastity to gain obedience.  For all that, however, this combination of obedience and chastity does not result in perfect virtue.  Both lack the ultimate perfection – love.

 

What it comes to is this: the perfection of charity knows such supremacy, it makes all the other virtues perfect.  It derives no perfection from them, not even from obedience – the one most capable of perfecting the rest.  We may be commanded to love, we may be practising obedience by loving; yet love’s perfection stems, not from obedience, but from the goodness of the person we love.

 

Charity, then, is not pre-eminent because it is obedient, but because it loves a pre-eminent good.  Undoubtedly we are obeying, when we love’ just as we are loving, when we obey.  If obedience is supremely lovable, that is because it leads to the heights of love.  Its perfection is due not to the fact that love breeds obedience, but to the fact that obedience breeds love.

 

God is both the ultimate goal and the original source of all that is good.  In exactly the same way charity, the source of all good emotions, is equally their final goal, their perfection.

 

[1]  The Nicomachean Ethics, 5.2.

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